I.Asimov: A Memoir

by Isaac Asimov

  I was once asked by someone what I did in order to start writing.

  I said, blankly, “What do you mean?”

  “Well, do you do setting-up exercises first, or sharpen all your pencils, or do a crossword puzzle—you know, something to get yourself into the mood.”

  “Oh,” I said, enlightened, “I see what you mean. Yes! Before I can

  possibly begin writing, it is always necessary for me to turn on my electric typewriter and to get close enough to it so that my fingers can reach the keys.”

  Why is this? What is the secret of die instant start?

  For one diing, I don’t write only when I’m writing. Whenever I’m away from my typewriter—eating, falling asleep, performing my ablutions—my mind keeps working. On occasion, I can hear bits of dialogue running through my thoughts, or passages of exposition. Usually, it deals with whatever I am writing or am about to write. Even when I don’t hear the actual words, I know that my mind is working on it unconsciously.

  That’s why I’m always ready to write. Everything is, in a sense, already written. I can just sit down and type it all out, at up to a hundred words a minute, at my mind’s dictation. Furthermore, I can be interrupted and it doesn’t affect me. After the interruption, I simply return to the business at hand and continue typing under mental dictation.

  It means, of course, that what enters your mind must stay in your mind. I always take that for granted, so that I never make notes. When Janet and I were first married, I would sometimes say, during a few wakeful moments at night, “I know what I ought to do in the novel.”

  She would say, anxiously, “Get up and write it down.” But I would say, “I don’t have to,” turn over, and let myself drift off to sleep. And the next morning I would remember it, of course. Janet used to say that it drove her crazy at first but she got used to it.

  The ordinary writer is bound to be assailed by insecurities as he writes. Is the sentence he has just created a sensible one? Is it expressed as well as it might be? Would it sound better if it were written differently? The ordinary writer is therefore always revising, always chopping and changing, always trying on different ways of expressing himself, and, for all I know, never being entirely satisfied. That is certainly no way to be prolific. A prolific writer, therefore, has to have self-assurance. He can’t sit around doubting the quality of his writing. Rather, he has to love his own writing.

  I do. I can pick up any one of my books, start reading it anywhere, and immediately be lost in it and keep on reading until I am shaken out of the spell by some external event. Janet finds this amusing, but I think it’s natural. If I didn’t enjoy my writing so much, how on earth could I stand all the writing I do?

  The result is that I rarely, if ever, worry about the sentences that reel out of my mind. If I have written them, I assume the chances are about twenty to one that they are perfectly all right.

  ‘There you are. Asimov’s literary output expressed as a function of the expanding universe.”

  I am not completely certain, of course. Robert Heinlein used to tell me that he “got it right the first time” and sent off the first draft. That is also supposed to be true of the mystery writer Rex Stout. I’m not quite that good. I do edit the first draft and make changes that usually amount to not more than 5 percent of the total, and then I send it off.

  One reason for my self-assurance, perhaps, is that I see a story or an article or a book as a pattern and not just as a succession of words. I know exactly how to fit each item in the piece into the pattern, so that

  it is never necessary for me to work from an outline. Even the most complicated plot, or the most intricate exposition, comes out properly, with everything in the right order.

  I rather imagine that a grand master in chess sees a chess game as a pattern, rather than as a succession of moves. A good baseball manager probably sees the game as a pattern rather than as a succession of plays. Well, I see patterns too in my specialty, but I don’t know how I do it. I simply have the knack and had it even as a kid.

  Of course, it also helps if you don’t try to be too literary in your writing. If you try to turn out a prose poem, that takes time, even for an accomplished prose poet like Ray Bradbury or Theodore Sturgeon.

  I have therefore deliberately cultivated a very plain style, even a colloquial one, which can be turned out rapidly and with which very little can go wrong. Of course, some critics, with crania that are more bone than mind, interpret this as my having “no style.” If anyone thinks, however, that it is easy to write with absolute clarity and no frills, I recommend that he try it.

  Being a prolific writer has its disadvantages, of course. It complicates the writer’s social and family life, for a prolific writer has to be self-absorbed. He must be. He has to be either writing or thinking about writing virtually all the time, and has no time for anything else.

  This is hard on one’s wife. Janet is tolerance personified, and is very fond of me and of all my quirks and peculiarities, but even she is sometimes goaded into remarking that we don’t talk to each other sufficiently.

  My daughter, Robyn, is very affectionate, as I’ve already said, and recently I asked her, “Robyn, what lend of father have I been?”

  I wanted her to tell me I was a loving father, a generous father, a warm and protective father (all of which I like to think I was, and am), but she thought about it and finally said, “Well, you were a busy father.”

  I imagine it does weary a family to have a husband and father who never wants to travel, who never wants to go on an outing or to parties or to the theater, who never wants to do anything but sit in his room and write. I daresay that the failure of my first marriage was partly the result of this.

  Gertrude once said, bitterly, as I was closing in on my hundredth book, “What good is all this anyway? When you are dying, you will realize all you missed in life, all the good things you could have afforded with the money you make and that you ignored in your mad

  pursuit of more and more books. What will a hundred books do for

  you?” And I said, “When I am dying, lean close over me to get my dying words. They are going to be: ‘Too bad! Only a hundred!’ “

  Having reached 451 books as of now doesn’t help the situation. If I were to be dying now, I would be murmuring, “Too bad! Only four hundred fifty-one.” (Those would be my next-to-last words. The last ones will be: “I love you, Janet.”) [They were. —Janet.] I was once interviewed by Barbara Walters, by the way, and while we were off-camera, she seemed very interested in my prolificity and wondered whether I didn’t sometimes want to do other things, rather than writing.

  “No,” I said.

  She said, “What if the doctor gave you six months to live. What

  would you do?”

  I said, “Type faster.”

  Writer’s Problems

  All writers have problems. In my case, the most amusing is that of handling people who don’t or can’t believe I am so prolific. After all, I don’t make a point of it. I don’t say to anyone, “Fine weather we’re ‘ having, and by the way I’ve published umpty-ump books.”

  But it does come up sometimes. Back in 1979, the first volume of my autobiography had just appeared, and, as it happened, it was my 200th book. I was at a cocktail party or something of the sort and someone who didn’t know me and hadn’t ever heard of me (there are billions of such people, unfortunately) said to me, “What do you do?”

  “I write,” I said, this being my standard answer.

  I expected him to ask me what I wrote, but he didn’t. He said, “Who is your publisher?” I said, “I have a number of publishers, but Doubleday is the most important of them. They have done three-eighths of my books.”

  He chose to interpret that remark as a way of aggrandizing myself. Up went his eyebrows, sneer went his lips, and he said, “I suppose that by that remark you mean that you have written eight books and that Doubleday has published three.”

  “No,” I said quiet
ly. “It means I have written two hundred books and Doubleday has published seventy-five.” At which those people around the table who did know me smiled, and my questioner looked suitably silly.

  A similar case took place about seven years later when I had just published my 365th book. I was standing holding a copy at the Doubleday elevator when a young man came rushing out. He was a new employee and he wanted to meet me. We shook hands, and he said, “How many books have you published, Dr. Asimov?” (I am frequently asked that.)

  I held up my book and said, “This is my three hundred sixty-fifth.”

  Just then someone came into the hall who didn’t know me.

  I said to the young man, “I’ve published a book for every day in the year.” And the stranger, passing me as I said this, smiled paternally, and said, “I’m sure it must seem like that sometimes,” and passed on.

  But writers have far worse troubles than that. After all, the writer’s life is inherently an insecure one. Each project is a new start and may be a failure. The fact that a previous item has been successful is no guard against failure this time.

  What’s more, as has often been pointed out, writing is a very lonely occupation. You can talk about what you write, and discuss it with family, friends, or editors, but when you sit down at that typewriter, you are alone with it and no one can possibly help. You must extract every word from your own suffering mind.

  It’s no wonder writers so often turn misanthropic or are driven to drink to dull the agony. I’ve heard it said that alcoholism is an occupational disease with writers.

  One young woman, gathering data for an article she was writing, must have assumed so, for she phoned me and asked me brightly, “Dr. Asimov, what is your favorite bar, and why?”

  “Bar?” I said. “You mean a place where you drink?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I may sometimes pass through a bar to get to a restaurant, but I’ve never stopped in one. I don’t drink.” There was a short pause, then she said, “Are you Isaac Asimov?” “Yes,” I said. “The writer?” “Yes,” I said. “And you’ve written hundreds of books?” “Yes,” I said, “and I’ve written every one of them cold sober.” She hung up, muttering. I seemed to have disillusioned her. The question is, of course: Why don’t I drink? And one answer (if you disregard the stern conditioning of my

  father) is that, as a writer, I am not insecure. With trivial exceptions I have sold every tiling I have written in fifty years. The most serious problem a writer can face, however, is “writer’s block.”

  This is a serious disease and when a writer has it he finds himself staring at a blank sheet of paper in the typewriter (or a blank screen on the word processor) and can’t do anything to unblank it. The words don’t come. Or if they do, they are clearly unsuitable and are quickly torn up or erased. What’s more, the disease is progressive, for the longer the inability to write continues, the more certain it is that it will continue to continue.

  In this connection I think of a cartoon I once saw. It shows a writer at his typewriter. He needs a shave. Several empty cups of coffee are on his desk. The ashtray is heaped high with butts. The floor about him is littered with torn and crumpled pieces of paper, and a littie girl is standing there and speaking. The caption reads: “Daddy, tell me a story.” Talk about one’s heart bleeding.

  In real life, some science fiction writers, and very good ones too, have had serious episodes of writer’s block that sometimes extend for years. There are some very good science fiction writers who have written quite prolifically for a period of years and have then stopped cold. Perhaps they were simply written out; perhaps they had said everything they had to say and could think of nothing more; and perhaps that is the reason for writer’s block too. A writer can’t put anything on paper when there’s nothing left (at least temporarily) in his mind.

  It may be, therefore, that writer’s block is unavoidable and that at best a writer must pause every once in a while, for a shorter or longer interval, to let his mind fill up again.

  In that case, how have I avoided writer’s block, considering that I never stop? If I were engaged in only one writing project at a time I suppose I wouldn’t avoid it. Frequently, when I am at work on a science fiction novel (the hardest to do of all the different things I write) I find myself heartily sick of it and unable to write another word. But I don’t let that drive me crazy. I don’t stare at blank sheets of paper. I don’t spend days and nights cudgeling a head that is empty of ideas.

  Instead, I simply leave the novel and go on to any of the dozen other projects that are on tap. I write an editorial, or an essay, or a short story, or work on one of my nonfiction books. By the time I’ve grown tired of these things, my mind has been able to do its proper work and fill up again. I return to my novel and find myself able to write easily once more.

  This periodic difficulty of getting the mind to deliver ideas reminds me of how irritating that perennial question is: “Where do you get your ideas?”

  I suppose that all writers of fiction are asked that, but for writers of science fiction, the question is usually phrased: “Where do you get your crazy ideas?”

  I don’t know what answer they expect, but Harlan Ellison answers, “From Schenectady. They have an idea factory and I subscribe to it, so every month they ship me a new idea.”

  I wonder how many people believe him.

  I was asked the question a few months ago by a top-notch science fiction writer, whose work I admire greatly. I gathered that he was suffering from writer’s block, and phoned me as one notoriously immune to it. “Where do you get your ideas?” he wanted to know.

  I said, “By thinking and thinking and thinking till I’m ready to kill myself.”

  He said, with enormous relief, “You too?”

  “Of course,” I said, “did you ever think it was easy to get a good new idea?”

  Most people, when I tell them this, are dreadfully disappointed. They would be far readier to believe that I had to use LSD or something like that so that ideas would come to me in an altered state of consciousness. If all one has to do is think, where’s the glamour?

  To those people, I say, “Try thinking. You’ll find it’s a lot harder than taking LSD.”

  Critics

  When Pebble in the Sky appeared, I naively expected that The New Tork Times would review it prominently on the day of publication. They didn’t, of course, then or ever, and I quickly learned that “prestige reviews” for writers like me were virtually nonexistent. As an example, not one of my books was ever as much as mentioned in The New Yorker, though I myself as a human being have been.

  I quickly learned something else. When reviews of my books began to appear in minor publications (and were sent me by the publishers or by the clipping service I patronized in the early days), I found that they were not necessarily favorable—and I found that I disliked, nay, hated, an unfavorable review.

  Such reviews are another source of insecurity, and a particularly pernicious one, for it arises after a book has been safely published. What will the critics say? Might not a terribly bad review kill the book after all the work you’ve done?

  It is a terrible power that a writer imagines critics have, but it’s just imagination. Any review (even unfavorable) is useful because it mentions the book and helps bring it to the reader’s consciousness. Or as Sam Goldwyn is supposed to have said, “Publicity is good. Good publicity is even better.”

  But even if a critic doesn’t really have the power to kill, he does have the power to hurt a writer’s fragile ego. It is not surprising, then, that writers universally detest and execrate critics. One could make quite a long (and, to a noncritic, amusing) essay if one simply quoted all the vituperation hurled at critics’ heads by writers.

  One writer once said, “A critic is like a eunuch in a harem. He sees what’s being done and he can criticize the technique, but he can’t do

  it himself.” And I have been known to sa
y, “A critic is not considered professional till he produces satisfactory evidence to the effect that he beats his mother.”

  But let’s put prejudice to one side and point out that good, professional critics perform a useful function. The statement that “they can’t do it themselves” is not always true, and even if it were, so what? You don’t have to be able to lay eggs to know when one of them is rotten.

  Criticism and writing are two different talents. I am a good writer but I have no critical ability. I can’t tell whether something I have written is good or bad, or just why it should be either. I can only say, “I like this story,” or “It was easy to read,” or other such trivial nonjudgmental remarks.

  The critic, if he can’t write as I do, can nevertheless analyze what I write and point out its flaws and virtues. In this way, he guides the reader and perhaps even helps the writer.

  Having said all that, I must remind you that I’m talking about critics of the first caliber. Most critics we encounter, alas, are fly-bynight pipsqueaks without any qualification for the job other than the rudimentary ability to read and write. It is their pleasure sometimes to tear down a book savagely, or to attack the author rather than the book. They use the review, sometimes, as a vehicle for displaying their own erudition or as an opportunity for safe sadism. (Sometimes reviews are not even signed.)

  It is these reviews, when I am the victim, that send me into a rage.

  Lester del Rey solves the problem by never reading reviews (though he himself once conducted a column of book reviews—and was very good at it too).

  “If you must read a review, Isaac,” he said, “then at the first unfavorable word, stop reading and throw it away.” I have tried to follow this sage advice but have not always managed.

  My first really unpleasant experience with a critic came in the early 1950s when someone named Henry Bott attacked my books with ferocity. In his review of The Caves of Steel, he made no mention of any part of the plot and his reference to the background of the novel was so ludicrously wrong that it was clear he had not bothered to read the book. I was furious.